


at war’s end

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Dinner, Flirting, M/M, Pre-Relationship, working together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-06 00:40:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12805833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: He’s heard the tales, of course. No son of Shara Bey’swouldn’tpursue every scrap of information he could about the hero pilots of the old Rebellion. Except for the ones he’d scrounged for concerning his mother, none of the stories—not Skywalker’s trench run, or the fact that they’d needed to devise a new system to track kills on X-wing hulls for Wedge Antilles, nor even Han Solo’s wild and numerous escapades in the Falcon—not one of them comes close, in Poe’s mind, to the ones he’s heard about Gener… ah, Lando.





	at war’s end

**Author's Note:**

  * For [primeideal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/gifts).



> This has been an unfinished treat for you since the first May the 4th exchange. Though this is based on one of the prompts from that exchange, I hope you still enjoy!

“You know, when General Organa pitched this whole Resistance thing to me, I never imagined this,” Poe says, thumbing at the skin under his eye and following the line of it to scratch at his temple. His eyes fall first to the table clothed in shimmersilk, track to the glasses of Bespin’s finest skygrown sparkling vintage, and settle, disturbed, on the platter of meat and bowl full of tangled noodles between him and—

“If you didn’t imagine this,” _General Calrissian himself_ , holy shit—answers, indicating the restaurant with a somewhat restrained gesture, “what were you imagining?”

Poe frowns, mouth tightening in thought. “Something less tacky,” he says, deadpan, gesturing at the glinting fabric. Lifting his drink—about ninety percent stem and too wide around the rim, the bowl fat and bulbous—he elaborates, “Good wine though. It’s a shame they got the glass all wrong.”

The general leans forward, elbows planting on the table, his fingers lacing under his chin. “You know wine?”

“I know you serve the bubbly kind in flutes,” he says, twisting the glass, thoughtful. The drink in question hisses and pops, thin lines of said bubbly winding toward the liquid’s surface to burst in agreement. “But I wouldn’t call myself an expert.”

“That’s good to know.” His finger taps against his lips, an inviting smile curling at the corner of his mouth. “Otherwise I might have talked your ear off about our vineries and where would we be then?”

“You could talk my ear off about anything you’d like, General.” Poe smiles crookedly, earning himself a raised eyebrow in return. Any other time, Poe might’ve blushed at his own cheek, but something about the general invites small audacities. _Passes the time anyway,_ he thinks, scanning the room full of overdressed customers, fussy wait staff, and menus liberated from the concept of transparent pricing strategies. How many credits was this whole evening going to end up costing?

“I believe I asked you to call me Lando, Commander.” Stretching his arm across the table, he points at, and then motions for Poe to hand over, the sparkling plate sat in front of him.

“Right, of course.” His throat constricts and heat creeps up his neck and his collar feels just a little bit too small, the high, sharp jut of it digging into his jugular. _Dress sharp, Poe,_ General Organa had said, a poor justification for the torture device now tightening around his neck all of it told. _We don’t want you to look out of place._ As he hands over the plate, he breathes a relieved sigh at not having dropped it and clears his throat. “Lando.”

“That sounds much better.”

He’s heard the tales, of course. No son of Shara Bey’s _wouldn’t_ pursue every scrap of information he could about the hero pilots of the old Rebellion. Except for the ones he’d scrounged for concerning his mother, none of the stories—not Skywalker’s trench run, or the fact that they’d needed to devise a new system to track kills on X-wing hulls for Wedge Antilles, nor even Han Solo’s wild and numerous escapades in the Falcon—not one of them comes close, in Poe’s mind, to the ones he’s heard about Gener… ah, Lando.

Becoming the commander of the Alliance Fleet? Squeezing a monstrosity of a ship through the construction nightmare that must have been the second Death Star? That’s _damned_ _impressive_ is what that is.

As Lando balances Poe’s plate on one hand and deftly twirls a healthy portion of the noodles onto the uselessly flat, circular surface, Poe doesn’t find it hard to imagine his skill in a cockpit or at a card table. Or anywhere else really. “You never answered my question,” he says, peering at Poe as he skewers a piece of the perfectly charred cut of nerf steak.

“Didn’t I?” Poe’s brain seizes up, his thoughts freezing in response to being put that much on the spot. _What question was that again?_ Grateful when Lando returns his plate to him, he inhales the spiced, herbaceous scent of the noodles, their pale sauce flecked with deep green and black. “Smells good.” _What did he ask you, Dameron?_

 _You’d better not drop that thing when he lets go,_ he thinks, his focus entirely on the noodles and the odds that they’ll slither right off the plate. Why would anyone go to a place where the dishware has an edge off of which anything could fall?

The same kind of place that serves nerf steak with herbed pasta. The same kind of place that fails to properly showcase its liquors.

Speaking of liquors… reaching for his wine, he drains the glass, his nose and throat burning as he swallows. He hisses at the sting, the discomfort clearing his mind. Oh. That’s right.

The Resistance. That’s what Lando had been asking about.

“Well,” he says, picking up his fork, wrapping his fingers tight around it, “I didn’t expect to find myself back in Republic space again so soon.”

“Mmhmm.” Lando handles, Poe notes, his own precariously balanced meal far more easily than Poe had, at ease with the uncertain boundary of his plate’s edge. “Leia mentioned you were almost court martialed.”

“Yeah.” Poe’s fingers slide across the base of his glass, twisting it. He catalogues the way it glints, catching the light in surprisingly compelling ways. Heart thudding, sweat prickling down his spine to the small of his back, he swallows. “Yeah, that’s probably what I was heading for.” Shrugging, he pokes at the noodles with the tines of his utensil. He doesn’t think much about what happened back then anymore, but it still sits like a shard of bone beneath his skin and threatens to pierce through the moment he remembers. “Not that I stuck around long enough to find out.”

“The Republic lost a damned fine pilot,” Lando replies, warm with sympathy. The smile he offers, an encouraging twist of his mouth, cheers Poe more than Poe would like to admit. Lando isn’t the first to have said as much to Poe, but it feels a little different coming from the man who piloted with Luke Skywalker, with Wedge Antilles, with Han Solo—

With his mother.

“Tell that to my old commanding officer,” he finally says.

Lando’s eyebrow quirks and his dark eyes twinkle. Sweeping the bottle of wine into his grip, he smoothly pours another glass—partially full, this isn’t just dinner, after all—for Poe. Setting the bottle back onto the table with an indifferent thunk, he lifts his glass, fingers curled carefully around the ridiculous, spindly stem. “Why don’t I make a toast instead?” he asks, waiting for Poe to raise his newly filled glass, too. When he finally does, casting his gaze around the restaurant, Lando tips his head forward in acknowledgment. “To daring pilots.”

 _Find your nerve, Dameron_. “To—” He has no reason to be nervous, but tell that to his heart and the way it jumps into his throat and causes his breath to hitch awkwardly. Swallowing, he pretends he hadn’t choked at all. “To inventive generals.”

“Now, now.” Lando’s tongue clicks, but he seems pleased enough from the amusement crinkling the skin around his eyes. “Leia didn’t mention sending a charmer.”

Poe lifts his chin and grins, fighting every urge to back down from the rapport Lando has spent all evening cultivated. This man is a _general_. Poe ought to issue crisp salutes and call him ‘sir’ and help train the new squad of pilots back at the Republic base that Lando had pointed out to Leia needed a whole lot of help in a short, short amount of time. That would make sense. And, nominally, that is what he’s here to do.

Except somewhere along the way things went a bit screwy—”All part of the process,” Lando had said when he’d asked Poe to help him with _this_. “This happens way more than you’d think.”—and now Poe’s in a crass little restaurant in the heart of Chandrila’s capital.

He’s still not sure why. Something about a First Order saboteur in the senate and flushing them out. Still. Even after what happened to the Hosnian system.

So, with that in mind, he absolutely should not be flirting with General Lando Calrissian. No matter how screwy things get. No matter how _easy_ Lando makes it to do.

 _You should’ve declined the dinner invitation. He doesn’t really need you to help him scout out a saboteur_ , Poe thinks, the barest hint of melancholy settling over him at the thought. It’s pointless for one thing. And inappropriate for another. His smile falters; he stares down into his glass, abashment turning his moment of abandon into a breach of propriety, one that hardens in his gut, his stomach twisting itself around it to deal the final blow.

“What’s wrong?” Lando’s glass lowers to his mouth and he sips at it, curiosity lighting his gaze. His eyes travel over Poe’s face, stalling in short bursts to focus on his eyes, his cheeks, his mouth. Whatever his inspection uncovers, Poe doesn’t want to know about it.

Draining his glass for a second time, Poe shakes his head, closing his eyes against the headache threatening to form at his temples. There’s not a lot of time for drinking on a Resistance base—not for him anyway—and he’s lost whatever edge he might’ve had as a new recruit with friends who kept a still in some abandoned corner of base. At least he tells himself that’s the reason his blood pulses so hard beneath the stretched skin of his forehead. It might be he’s just trying to bullshit himself. “Not a thing.” His smile rebuilds itself, a little weaker around the edges, but present.

“‘Not a thing’ he says,” Lando replies. The whites of his eyes glitter under the even, diffuse light radiating from the ceiling. “You’re a terrible liar.”

That breaks the tension and, laughing slightly, Poe inclines his head. His curls brush his forehead and he quickly dashes them aside, palm coming to a stop at the back of his neck. “I’ve never heard that before.”

“The funny thing about terrible liars is that a lot of the time, they don’t get better with practice right away.” Lando strokes his mustache, chews thoughtfully at his lip. Ends the gesture with a finger wagging in Poe’s direction. “In fact, telling one lie right after the other does them no good at all.”

“Well.” Poe shrugs. “I guess you got me.”

“That’s okay,” Lando replies, even and pleased, soothing and gregarious all at once. “I happen to like terrible liars.”

And there it is again. Before he thinks about it, a response already trips across his tongue, falls headfirst against the locked gates of his teeth where it cannot pass. _What else do you like?_ Instead, he reminds himself that he’s here for a reason, that he’s here to help Lando catch the individual interfering with the Republic’s efforts to rebuild its forces. “You don’t seem all that worried about this saboteur.”

Lando’s hand wafts through the air, his shadow casting strokes of darkness across the table. “They’ll show up when they show up. I don’t mean to waste the opportunity to enjoy myself in the meantime. Not when they’re this incompetent.”

 _Incompetent just about covers it,_ Poe thinks. What in the hell is this person waiting for?

But Lando is right. There’s no reason not to enjoy the evening while there’s still an evening to enjoy. If he’s being honest, he hasn’t had a break in years it feels like. He hasn’t had a chance to relax. Properly. In even longer than that. What Lando’s giving him here is a gift. If only it was different circumstances that brought them together. It’s one thing to flirt and tease and enjoy one another’s company for an evening. It was another to push for something more.

And Poe, who is often given to pushing, can’t bring himself to do it here. Not for so selfish a reason.

But, oh, we wants to. Not least of all because he thinks Lando would be interested, too.

As though sensing Poe’s thoughts, Lando hums. “You know,” he says finally, “this war is gonna have to end sooner or later.”

Poe swallows and shrugs. Some days, he agrees. Others, he’s not so sure. “One would hope.”

Lando laughs. “Trust me. Wars always end. Doesn’t mean they don’t pop back up again, but there’s always some peace thrown in there. You’ll find some of it.” He smiles and it makes Poe feel for all the world like he will make it out of this war.

Just one more thing that makes Lando an extraordinary person in Poe’s mind. Even General Organa, with all of her grand speeches and talk of their inevitable triumph, has never made him truly believe he’d survive. They’d win, of course, but he hadn’t seen himself in that context. But now, sitting across from Lando, he can. In fact, he wants it.

“Where do you see yourself in the midst of all this peace?”

“Right here,” Lando replies with no hesitation. “Sitting across from you. If you’d like it.”

“You know,” Poe says to him right back, adopting the same fearlessness, “I think I’d like that.”


End file.
